The personal and societal habit of tobacco smoking has existed for centuries, but the severity of its potential detrimental health effects has undergone serious scrutiny only in the last few decades. It is now commonly accepted that tobacco smoke contains mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds that relate to serious adverse health consequences. The presence of these compounds in tobacco smoke creates a significant cost to society by increasing health costs and causing premature mortality. The adverse affects of tobacco smoke are linked to major pathological conditions such as: cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, chronic obstructive lung diseases (including chronic bronchitis, asthma and emphysema), periodontal disease etc. While recent efforts at educating consumers about the harmful effects of tobacco smoke and smoking prevention programs have been helpful, people continue to smoke despite these educational efforts to the contrary.
Attempts to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco smoke have included positioning filters of varying compositions within tobacco products. Current filters that are available, such as those made from cellulose acetate have only been moderately successful at decreasing the particulate portion of tobacco smoke that contains tar and nicotine. While reduction of tar mid nicotine are believed to be helpful, conventional filters have been unsuccessful at effectively removing components within the gas-vapor portion of tobacco smoke containing the most toxic components, with the exception of activated carbon filters which are known to remove small amounts of cyanide and carbon monoxide. Additionally, the relative health benefits of removing particulate matter and toxic components in the gas-vapor phase from tobacco smoke are not well understood and its effect on the health of smokers is without standards.
There have also been various proposed treatments for the administration of nicotine (the putative addictive substance in tobacco smoking) as a replacement for tobacco smoking. One of the most successful approaches, which have been used to date in reducing the incidence of tobacco smoking, relies upon nicotine containing chewing gum. The use of this type of gum suffers from several problems, including not only the bad taste and destruction of dental appliances, but the gastrointestinal upset which results there from and which also reduces compliance. Moreover, the nicotine containing chewing gums do not satisfy that craving which most smokers experience for the distinct sensations in the throat and chest elicited by the nicotine in smoke. Over the course of many years of tobacco smoking, these particular sensations have become an important part of and conditioned with the habit of smoking and help maintain tobacco smoke dependency.
There have also been several proposals for administering nicotine through various aerosol sprays. However, the aerosol sprays are designed to supply that amount of nicotine, which would have been acquired by a user through the normal channel of tobacco smoking. The sprays result in severe respiratory tract irritation. There is no available means to orally provide the nicotine either by means of an oral or nasal spray and attenuate the severe irritating effects of the nicotine.
Therefore there is an urgent need for a nicotine free antidote to tobacco smoking or addiction to tobacco related products. Hitherto, we provide a novel nicotine free herbal formulation as an anti-dote to the poisoning effects of tobacco products such as Cigarettes, Gutka, Pan masala and other similar tobacco products comprising of sterilized dried plant powder/extracts together with the conventional additives to form the oral dosage forms, which include tablets, capsules, syrup, powders ready for suspension and mouth spray.